


Another Flight

by AceofHarts



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canon Era, M/M, not that we know the ending but it probably won't be this you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1374478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofHarts/pseuds/AceofHarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fighting's finished; they finally made it to the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Flight

            Mikasa wasn’t sure the gas would hold out.

            She didn’t slow down. There wasn’t any point. As the trees thinned out, so the sunlight broadened from strands to beams to wide green-gold expanses; she was quickly running out of targets to sink her 3DMG into.

            That aside, the adrenaline was dragging her forward faster than her gear was prepared to let her go. It was so close now that the daylight was drawing water from her eyes, so close that the smell of leaves and soil and low-flung forest plants was forced back by the sharp sting of salt.

            “Armin, look—!” Eren said from a little ways behind. His voice cracked like it had when he’d first hit puberty. “It’s—I thought it’d be—greyer, I—”

            The pistons gave one last gasp and flung Mikasa forward into the bare bleached sunshine. When her boots met the sand she skidded but did not fall, would not fall. The ocean yawned wide before her, encompassing almost her whole line of sight. Hard-edged dark cliffs to the left and right gave way to the softness of the sand, but even at their highest they were hardly shadows in the periphery of this shining enormity. Eren had been right. She’d imagined an entirely different colour from this. It was not precisely either blue or green, but both of them together at once, both at their brightest. She'd always imagined something smaller, duller, easier to process. 

            Because she _had_ pictured it, if less than the other two had. This had always been Eren’s and Armin’s project so much more than hers—it had been Armin’s books and Eren’s determination, it had been _their_ dream, and Mikasa had watched it and thought it was beautiful, but thought it was eternally something private. It was different now that they’d actually made it. The two thumps, one on either side of her as Eren and Armin launched themselves to the seaside with her, the breathlessness in time with her own—they were here with her, too.

            She needed to be closer. The weight of the 3DMG fell from her hips; she didn’t even remember moving her hands to unfasten it, but the lightness she felt as she moved toward was undeniable. There had been moments, especially toward the end, when she’d felt exposed without the gear handy. It had been instrumental in saving her life, Eren’s, Armin’s, anyone’s—it had been instrumental in ending the fight altogether—but for now walking without it felt like flying. 

            Armin could not form a coherent thought. His mind was too full for that. Without the hiss of the gear, the cries of distant birds and the steady rush of the waves were almost as overpowering as the sight of the sea itself. Armin’s fingers fumbled over the stitching of the Survey Corps insignia, scrabbling across the coarse fabric like he was experiencing heart failure until he found his way beneath the buttons to the interior pocket. Those birds (so white they glowed in this light and he had to squint to see them), the smell in the air—there was plant life in this water, somewhere, and species of sea creatures never before seen, and he had to get all of it down so that he would never forget it—

            A muttered curse beside him made him pause just as his fingers found the notebook he kept over his heart. Eren was struggling with his gear as he hadn’t since they’d been recruits, fingers slipping uselessly over buckles and belts. With a grunt of frustration Eren started forward anyway.

            “Hold on—” Armin blocked his path, but it was the hand he placed on Eren’s shoulder that stopped him from charging into the ocean in full gear. His best friend could not be allowed to sink within thirty seconds of their reaching the ocean. “We’ve got time, Eren,” he said, gently. It was as much for his own benefit as for Eren’s. Documentation could wait. This was so much more important than a few hastily-scrawled notes on paper would ever be able to convey. He wouldn’t forget it while it was still right in front of him.

            He got a reluctant nod by way of response. Eren continued to look out at the waves even as Armin dismantled his gear for him.

            The metal cases dropped to the sand, first Eren’s and then Armin’s. The weapons they contained had been retired for some time now, but with this it felt final. Never, never again should they be giving or receiving scars with those blades. There was nothing left to fight. 

            Armin’s fingers moved then to the clasp of his own cloak. Eren knew what was happening. It was inevitable at this point, now that they’d made it all the way here. He hadn’t known whether Mikasa would even want to, yet there she was by the water, pulling off her boots. Eren still could hardly feel his fingers, but the cloak at least was easier to manage than a network of belts. He folded it as neatly as he could, given the state he was in, and set it on the sand next to Armin’s with as much care as he could summon. Those wings were still part of him, and they always would be. Right now, though, in this place, he needed to move forward on his own bare feet.  

            _We’ve got time…_

            It had been at least a month since the fighting had stopped, but the urgency was only loosening its hold erratically. It would seize them sometimes—any of them—while they were sleeping, eating, starting on the expedition, just standing there listlessly. Sometimes it meant reaching out for the most familiar hand or sleeve or scarf to clutch, maybe for a moment or maybe for an hour, in an attempt to express something which both parties already knew. Sometimes it meant being blindsided by a burst of energy, frantically searching for some task to accomplish or scrambling to finish the one at hand because it seemed for no explicable reason to be the most important thing in the world. And sometimes it meant grabbing your best friend’s collar and kissing him clumsily on the lips, because unfamiliar though this was, your mouth could manage it more easily than forming the words. Rationally speaking, Eren knew Armin was right, as he was usually right. They did have time—all the time they should need. But after everything else he would not risk putting this off any longer. He needed Armin to know.

            And Armin understood. He squeaked somewhere in his throat when Eren’s mouth first met his, but he recovered quickly. While Eren was still just remembering that he in fact had hands and should probably not be letting them drift aimlessly to the left and right of Armin’s shoulders, the shorter boy fitted both his hands across the flat of Eren’s collarbone, curling his fingers slightly into the fabric of his shirt and leaning forward.

            Eren didn’t remember how exactly it ended, which was unfortunate. The smattering of pink still rising on Armin’s cheeks and the smile he was trying to hide by scrunching it over to one side of his face meant this was something that was going to be happening again, and Eren was keen to gather experience and learn how it worked. It was no good if his mind blanked out every time; he wanted to learn quickly. 

            Later, though. Mikasa had stopped with her bare toes curling into damp sand, just beyond the waves’ reach. Her shoulders were slack, and one hand rested, unclenched, at her side. The other was held back towards Eren. Armin already held Eren’s left in his own, was standing ready before him and smiling like he had when he’s first told him about the ocean.

             There was no reason to stay back any longer. Eren ran for Mikasa’s hand, and once he had it held as tightly in his as Armin’s was it was just a few sprinted steps more before the water was rising up to knee level.

            “Aaaaaaargh it’s so cold!” Eren said, his arms lifting instinctively as if he could shoot straight out of the water if he flapped them hard enough. Instead they came down on Armin’s and Mikasa’s shoulders. Armin nearly collapsed into the water with the combination of surprise, weight, and awe-induced weak knees. “It’s warm today! What is this?”

            “It makes sense,” Armin said as the wave withdrew upon itself. Eren lurched forwards after it, still half-embracing both of his friends. “Water takes time to heat, and this is such a huge amount of it… We’re too close to winter. That’s all.”

            “I’m still going to swim in it.”

            “You’d get sick,” Mikasa said.

            “The camp’s close by,” Armin said, “and we’ll probably be in the area for a while—you’ll get the chance.” This was, after all, a Survey Corps mission: discovering the shape of the continent again so that the rest of humanity could move out from within the walls. They would make camp here for a while as they mapped out the region and catalogued what they found there, and then they would move on, maybe to places even more amazing. At the moment Eren could not imagine how that was possible. Then again, the ocean itself had struck him in a way he hadn’t expected and he’d been picturing it for years, calling up a too-small, too-simple image to cling to when what was in front of him was too painful to bear.

            “If not this time, we’ll come back,” Mikasa said. The water had swelled up around their calves again. This time Eren didn’t jump or tip backwards away from the cold. “We’ll be here in the summer.”

            “It’s still really early in the year—it’s only just starting to warm up,” Armin said with a nod.

            Mikasa nudged the side of her head against Eren’s and said something he hadn’t heard in years and years. They’d been out in the wild for so many days now, and it had been so long since he’d marked this particular day in the first place, that it had slipped his mind completely.

            “Happy birthday, Eren.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realized that it was Eren's birthday and just...wanted to give him something nice. Like a large body of saltwater to splash in with Mikasa and Armin.


End file.
